Initially known for her work in photography—which she has been making over the last three decades—New York–based artist Moyra Davey (born 1958) is also an esteemed writer, editor and, most recently, filmmaker, whose works layer personal narratives with explorations of other authors, filmmakers and artists. This book is based on two related projects that take form as text, photography and film. Les Goddesses (2011) collapses the lives of Davey and her five sisters with those of the daughters of Mary Wollstonecraft, the 18th-century feminist writer and activist. Hemlock Forest (2016) weaves references to Wollstonecraft, Chantal Akerman and Karl Ove Knausgaard with her own family stories. During the making of Hemlock Forest, Akerman took her own life. Her death soon engulfed Davey’s awareness, prompting a broader exploration of Akerman’s and her own biographies, amid more universal themes of compulsion, artistic production, life and its passing.

Published by ICA, University of Pennsylvania/Museum Moderner Kunst /Dancing Foxes Press.Texts by Moyra Davey, Alison Strayer.

In the oeuvre of New York artist Moyra Davey (born 1958), literature and writing are as significant as photography, film and video. In her latest text, Burn the Diaries, Davey considers the work of French playwright and political activist Jean Genet, while examining fugitive moments from her own life. An essay by her childhood friend and reading companion Alison Strayer, written in response, reflects on Davey's themes. The publication is part of a group of new works--also including photographs, a film and an installation of her signature mailers, which Davey sends to family, friends and acquaintances--that illuminate the relationship between image and language. This volume can be read both as an artist's book and a catalogue to accompany the exhibition at mumok, Vienna, and the ICA, Philadelphia, in 2014.